Wow. I’m a little taken aback at his vehemence there.

Some of the most fun I had playing D2 was taking my LF Javazon through the cows - having fluid mobs of certain death at my heels, the carnage after rounding up a particularly big mob, sifting through the junk hoping for something good.

Honestly, I never found anything valuable from the cows - all my good MF-ing came from Baal or Meph. Cows were just a load of fun, easy to load up for a quick run when I needed a distraction. I enjoyed them a lot more than slogging through the beginning of Act III, that’s for sure.

By the time you can do Hell cows, you’re probably in the 70’s anyway, and it’s nice to have a tough, repeatable area to strategize for after "beat the big boss." I played mostly SP, though, so maybe I am unaware of the battle.net issues with cows.

Im totaly in agreement with Bashiok.

If you really want to play a game without any thought whatsoever then theres plenty of them out there. Thats not what the game creators want and not what many players would want if there was a choice. What are there really to play for if its the only thing in it, sure Diablo 2 where more than the Cow level. But in a way theres nothing more when its the only place thats played.

In my oppinion its ok with this sort of secret level when the game is near its ending. When Diablo 3 have been out for some years and players find new games, add it for some short lived fun. But keep it away when the game is alive and kicking.

So…Diablo 1 and 2 were actually nothing? And the 18.5 million sales or whatever the amount was, purely was made/achieved coz it had a "Blizzard" stamp on it? Seems the new crew is undermining old games in the saga too much, well given the fact that Cow Level was overpowered in terms of getting good items, fast xp etc.. but anyhow it reaks of undermining whole game serie and I dont like it a bit. Even if the 3rd game of series will sell 18.5 million combined, it still wont make it a "Great game" if its just dev team who argumented to be "Great game" and previous games NOT.

Pretty angry CM blizz has for D3 or should I say whole devteam

While I agree on the gamebreaking things, it wouldn’t have been that hard to limit the numbers a player could visit the level in more ways, and still kept the loot and exp at that level.

The idea was cool, but execution killed off many other ways to level, which is true!

Still, the lack for other proper grinding spots probably pushed this to the forefront the most.

I still think there should be a cow level in D3, perhaps the game in general will just be "large" enough to sport other grind spots, or, perhaps a lesser need for it through content, and a more limited experience with the cow level. Like you only get a limited number, regardless of killing cow king.

I don’t want a small and repetitive area like cow lvl or throne of destruction to be the place where all high lvl chars end up.

The most rewarding way to play the game should be fun, varying and challenging.

Morannon has it exactly right. There needs to be more diverse "high-level content" for D3. If we have our choice of multiple large areas that are about equally good in terms of MF, things will be far more interesting. I’m sure they’ve learned some lessons from WoW.

While I can understand his philosophy at a high level. From a practical perspective, it would be rare for a person playing through the first time to skip all the content and only do cows. For second and third pass characters, why not? Once you’ve played through once or twice, I can see the value in running areas repeatedly for XP. If you just want to see how a build is in Hell difficulty, it is nice to power level. Normal and Nightmare are no longer challenging after a point. I never used cows but i did milk the heck out of Act 5 runs and ‘blood runs’ ... so same thing.

Anyway, he misses the mark on another issue as well. Curtailing the things players find fun is sort of ridiculous. To me a big part of the reply was making specialized characters. I had a special MF amazon, a special Hell Baal character, a special Hell meph runner, a special Hell Countess runner, a special Act Rusher amazon, etc. Many people make special purpose cow killers, or characters for other areas of the game. Trying to kill areas like that is pretty much throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I was never big into cows, but many people continued to play BECAUSE of cows, or other special projects for things a developer might consider cheesy.

Another issue is that if they nerf one thing, players will gravitate to the next easy thing. So, I think it is pointless to go beyond some basic sanity checking on things players run over and over. Players did Blood Runs like crazy, so they made Act 5 archers hit so hard that players wouldnt even do Blood Runs anymore. That only switched it to Hell Cows, and other areas. They added crazy immunities to hell difficulty in 1.10 so players just gravitate to regions that dont spawn immunes to their build, but that DO have farming / XP run potential. If players keep gravitating to it, they are having fun. So when developers expend so much energy to curb activity that players find fun, and then curb the next one and the next one (and not even exploits; just human nature stuff where players like repeating stuff where they can crush their enemies) ... you have to wonder what’s up. Are they trying to punish the "bad" kids? It feels that way.

"Another issue is that if they nerf one thing, players will gravitate to the next easy thing. So, I think it is pointless to go beyond some basic sanity checking on things players run over and over."

This is some of the thinking that has scared me about D3. Everywhere I look in the world I see somebody selling me something, then trying to tell me how I have to enjoy it. From Snobbish musicians and their copyright lawsuits, to Software designers that wrap everything in a abhorrent EULA. Waaaay to many people taking themselves too seriously.

Haha, that’s kinda true.  Stuff like Cow Level and Bloodly run/Bhaal run really ruined the game for some late comers when all they did was follow their high level friend around and get free levels.